Can We Identify The 'making' Of The English Working Class?

For E.P Thompson, the working class did not 'rise like the sun, but was present at its own making'. In the Making of the English Working Class Thompson revised orthodox assumptions about the emergence of the working class by arguing that the working class of the nineteenth century was as much a product of agency as social conditioning. Whereas as traditional accounts of class, such as Engels The Condition of the Working Class argued that the working class was engendered by factory hands, Thompson emphasised the activities of the labouring man in its development. Thompson's master narrative has since been criticised by scholars such as Cannadine, who argue that this model is both too idealistic and generalised. Stedman-Jones has further questioned how far it is possible to speak of a 'working class consciousness' as opposed to a 'mass consciousness' or 'popular consciousness'. Using the locale of Newcastle and Tyneside this essay will seek to demonstrate that it is possible to identify the 'making' of the working class in this region. The roots of the 'working class' of the nineteenth century are exemplified in the rhetoric of conflict throughout the eighteenth century, establishment of institutions such as trade unions and friendly societies, religious movements, traditions and community patterns. Newcastle provides a fruitful point of analysis, given the predominance of large units of heavy industry in the local economy and the obvious dependence of the locale on the coal industry. Indeed, the coal industry can be described as the essential proletariat domain, given its heavy capital investment and the nature of the work, which involved workers gathering in large numbers and communities. As a result, this essay focuses largely on the keelmen and miners of the locale. This essay does not seek to assert that a working class was 'made' by 1833, as Thompson proposes, but rather that the 'making' process was set into motion during the eighteenth century. A key feature of Thompson's argument for the 'making' of the English working class is his identification of popular disturbance, riots, strikes and protests as an indication of a popular consciousness. These strikes and protests indicated an organisation and control which was disconcerting to employers and authorities. Both Thompson and Ellis have attempted to rehabilitate traditional perceptions of the 'riot', which have been presented as irrational, spontaneous responses to hunger and discontent. Thompson has argued for the 'moral economy of the crowd', which stresses that riots were generally peaceable acts with a common political culture, inspired by the rights to set the price of essential goods, rather than spontaneous acts of violence. Further to this he argued that by 1795 it is possible to identify a genuine articulate political intention and motivation amongst the crowd. Yet, as Dobson has highlighted, stoppages were frequent in Newcastle from the early eighteenth century. Throughout the century keelmen imposed prolonged strikes against their employers which often achieved national importance. The prolonged resistance of the Keelmen in 1750, in opposition to the breaking of the Contract of 1744, which had verbalized general terms of employment and wages, demonstrates a collective articulation of political interests. As early as 1738, a large number were prepared to uphold their rights against employers complaining of a 'barbarity abhorred by Jewes, Turks and Infidels'. Moreover, their concern to enlist the support of an authority in their plight indicates an articulation of real concerns and a level of comradeship which has previously been overlooked. This demonstrates a mutual recognition of interests and predicaments, which was to form the basis of a working class consciousness. Ellis has further demonstrated that riots in Newcastle, although large and potentially dangerous, should be viewed as 'disciplined demonstrations'. Much has been made of the Guildhall Riots of 1740 to emphasise the 'brutish' nature of the 'mob'. Yet it is clear that the ambush of the town hall by angry townsmen, keel men and ironworkers was a response to the aggravation of circumstance: the agreement between pitmen leaders and merchants on the setting of prices of grain had been broken. The eventual outcome of the riots saw the recognition from the authorities of the justice of the demonstrator's grievances by remedying their previous negligence to prevent the movement of grain. Cannadine has argued that this collective power, which was characterised here by anger and dissent, merely highlights a binary interpretation of social order, rather than the emergence of something akin to class. In actuality it demonstrates far more than this, it highlights an awareness amongst labourers of communal interests and predicaments, and an intention to alter the situation through means of political organisation and rallying. This was not yet a homogenous movement, since it did not transcend trade boundaries, but given this sense of solidarity and comradeship, the Keelmen and Miners of Newcastle and Tyneside can be perceived as an embryo of the organized proletariat. Solidarity and comradeship was not only exemplified by the strikes and mutinies against employers, but is also apparent in industrial institutions, which corresponded with a consciousness of mutual class interests and predicaments. The keelmen of the eighteenth century were collectively organised. As early as 1707 keelmen and masters were struggling for control of the Keelmen Charity of Tyneside, with a bid for a Charter of incorporation which would give them permanent legal status and control of the charity funds. Fewster has argued that this demonstrated a desire for recognition of what was essentially a trade union. The origins of trade unionism, which stressed an association of wage earners for the purpose of maintaining and improving the conditions of their employment, can be identified in the Friendly Societies of the eighteenth century, which emphasised protection of artisans against factors such as sickness and unemployment. In 1730 two hundred keelmen founded a Friendly Society in Newcastle which they paid contributions into every six weeks. In 1760 the terms of membership were extended to include those who weren't keelmen. Whilst it could be argued that the establishment of trade specific friendly societies such as the establishment of the shoe makers friendly society in 1719, obscured 'primitive' forms of unionism, since they emphasised trade loyalties which did not necessarily cross trade boundaries, it is of note that the trade unions of the mid-nineteenth century, were almost inevitably composed of the friendly societies of the eighteenth century. Thus, the subtle differences of these societies actually reveal fundamental similarities. Although usually formed for a single trade, all of these friendly societies were formed of a class of unskilled labourers, all of whom were employed by a class of capitalists but had no prospects of becoming the employer themselves. This solidarity and independence can be further highlighted by their determination to provide for their own poor, such as through attempts to build a 'very capricious, beautiful hospital'. As much as mutiny demonstrated a willingness to articulate a collective grievance, this form of organisation, as the Webbs argue 'crystallized an ethos of mutuality'. Such mutuality was affirmed within the 'community'. In Newcastle this 'embryonic proletariat community' can easily be seen in the early eighteenth century, given its large, independent population of coal workers. Miners were often presented as being 'communities' apart, since they usually lived in villages of mono-occupational nature, away from villages which middling households and farm labourers habited, giving them a certain solidarity. This further explains why the pit village may have been perceived as an 'overwhelmingly proletariat place'. This was emphasised by the fact that the ruling class chose to live far from the mining villages, which resulted in an ignorance of their workings and a certain antagonism, adding to the bipolar nature of the place. The emergence of terrace labourer's cottages such as Philadelphia Row provides further evidence for this polarisation. This occupational separation was also apparent amongst the keelmen, who formed a distinct community within Newcastle, with most of them living in Sandgate. Such segregation can be seen to have stimulated a collective identity based on the mutuality of trade. It was through this 'community' as well as through trade that it is possible to identify the embryos of a 'working class' culture. It is clear that in the early nineteenth century there still existed a social differentiation between trades. This is particularly apparent in the treatment on the 'pit-men'. William Hone, in 1828 described the pitmen of the North-East harshly, writing 'they have the air of a primitive race' who are 'cut off from their fellow men in their interests and feelings' and were likely to marry amongst each other for 'generations until their population has become a dense mass of relationship'. This cultural differentiation was further affirmed by the cultivation of Methodism within the pit-village, which became increasingly criticised by authorities as having the potential as a working class institution. Moreover, traditionally in the North East pitmen were hired by the year under the 'bond' system, which prevented men from moving freely from one employer to another but gave them a powerful collective re-negotiating position when the bonds came up for renewal. Thus, Kerr and Siegel's 'isolated mass' theory does not negate from the 'making' of a working class hypothesis, but merely demonstrates how a consciousness of labouring identities was made. In Thompson's bi-polar model of social relations in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, he has underestimated the role of the emergence of a middle class in defining that of a working class. Brooks work on the apprenticeship has revealed that the decline of apprenticeships in Newcastle and Tyneside during the eighteenth century led to diminishing prospects and to the growth of cultural differentiation. The early eighteenth century saw the sharp decline of apprenticeships with youths abandoning and forgoing internships in favour of immediate employment for wages. For Brooks, this decline is directly connected with the decline of the middling sort and the ultimate emergence of the middle and working classes. Whilst Thompson has highlighted the crucial consequence of the advent of wage labour as the demise of dependence on the patriarchal 'banditti', another consequence lay in the fact that, as Engels has pointed out, for the first time there was an integral permanent class who faced no social mobility. This process began in the early eighteenth century, with the decline of apprenticeship. It exacerbated social polarization. It is essential not to overestimate the extent and pace at which a labour force became homogenous and stimulated a 'working class' consciousness. Throughout the eighteenth and early nineteenth century the labour force was far too fragmented, localised and sectionalised to be described as a homogenous class. Equally so, it is possible to see the 'making' of the English working class within this locale, and to assert that the establishment of a working class was the result of a process which began in the early eighteenth century, rather than an instantaneous development which emerged in response to the cotton mill. Protests and strikes of the eighteenth century indicate a strongly self-conscious political articulation of grievances whilst the friendly society, which was essentially the precursor to the trade union, indicated an independence from authority and solidarity based on unified experience. The community structure allowed a proletariat force to emerge and allowed for the cultivation and continuation of a culture and tradition which formed the basis of working class values and ideals. Finally, the emergence of a middle class in the eighteenth century resulted in further social segregation and an increasing recognition of collective interests and predicaments amongst labourers, against those of an emerging middle class. The traditions and institutions which were borne in the eighteenth century emerged in the nineteenth century as part of a working class consciousness. Behind these subtle differences lay fundamental similarities, and it was during this period that the keelmen and miners of Newcastle and Tyneside were 'making' their identity.